The invention relates to the checking of software packages with a view to improving software package quality.
As software installation packages become more and more complex, the task of verifying the structure and content of such packages becomes more and more difficult. A software installation package is a set of software components that are for delivery to a customer for installation on a computer system, the package being operable when it has been installed on the computer system. A software installation package could also be termed a software delivery package, but for reasons of conciseness is referred to hereinafter as a software package.
A software package as supplied, for example, on a medium such as disk, or over a network can involve many program and data components (hereinafter software components), such as data files, program files, program modules, etc. Typically, the process of verifying that the software components are valid in themselves, are consistent with each other, and are consistent with a target platform or system has involved manual checking of those components by the members of a development team and/or an associated quality control group.
There are individual tools that can provide isolated checks on a software package. For example, a program called “pkgchk”, available on the Solaris operating system platform (Solaris is a Trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.), is able to provide a check of package structure integrity. However, even with such tools, manual coordination of tests to be performed is required, which is expensive, time consuming, and prone to human error.
An aim of the invention is, therefore, to enable more effective and reliable verification of software packages in a flexible manner.